Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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national tracks weren't really that rough by today's motocross stan- dards. The only thing I couldn't do was sail it over the jumps. Instead, you had to do what they call the 'Bubba Scrub' now. You just cranked it over real hard and got on the brakes to keep it on the ground." Hateley makes it abundantly clear that he isn't about to take credit for James Stewart's signa- ture move, however. "If I ever got dad's Triumph that sideways, it was by sheer accident," Hateley said. "I guarantee it. "But when I showed up to Houston, I felt sharp. I don't think that the East Coast boys were as sharp, because I don't think that they did as much riding on the ice back then as they do now. That was one of the key things for me. I showed up to Houston having trained on a 330-pound motorcycle." That '72 Houston TT was as easy a victory as Hateley ever recalls enjoying. "I was on, and the bike was on," Hateley says. "Behind me, I guess Kenny Roberts and Eddie Mulder were having at it. Mulder kept Kenny busy, and he was able to beat Kenny." Five years later, to the day, Hateley found himself being the pursuer rather than the pursued, as he was trying to track down John Gennai. "By then, the Triumphs had seen their days," says Hateley who was still Triumph-mounted in '77. "The year before, Rick Hocking had won the TT on a Yamaha TT500 single, and that was the first time that a four- stroke single had ever won at Houston, but basically that time Kenny and I went at it back and forth behind Hocking, and that was probably one of the best races of my life. We went high, low—if we didn't put on a show, I don't know what one is. That was a highlight of my career, having to work my butt off to get third." Hateley was working his butt off while running second in '77, but it looked as though it was going to take a miscue by Gen- nai to give Hateley a chance. Providence smiled on Hateley at the same time it crapped on Gennai. "I didn't figure I was going to catch him, but I must have been putting enough pressure on him because he finally went down," Hateley says. "He was going into turn one and low-sided it, and there I was. It was kind of handed to me, but hey, you have to keep it upright for 25 laps." Hateley began scaling it back after the '77 season, partially because the Triumph dynasty was dying out, partially because he was finding more secure—al- beit equally precarious—work as a stuntman in Hollywood. The '79 TT was Hateley's last visit to Houston, the TT itself expiring in 1985 and the venue leaving the schedule completely after 1986. Hateley's recollections of Houston are many and memo- rable. He was glad to be a part of it and sorry to see it go. "That trade show slipping away from Houston probably has as much to do with the demise of interest in dirt track as any- thing," he says. "I do remember that '77 TT was the first year that RJ Reynolds was involved in the series. So, I guess you could say I won the first Camel Pro Se- ries race ever. Also, I'm not too sure which race it was, the '72 or the '77 race, but I remember that it paid something like $4800 to win, and they paid us off in cash. [Photographer] Dan Mahony was with me that night, and we went back to the hotel room, and I remember that I put all the cash in a big pile on one of the beds and then did a belly flop onto it from the other bed!" CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the May 4, 2005, issue of Cycle News. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES P126 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives